The present invention relates to a sorter controller for placing copied sheets of paper, discharged in sequence by the copying machine, printer, etc., into a plurality of bins.
Some sorters have, besides a plurality of sort bins for sorting and placing a plurality of copy sheets, a non-sort bin, provided separately from the sort bins, for the normal copying operation where sorting is not performed. Moreover, some copying machines have an interruption function, whereby an interruption can be applied while a large number of originals are being copied.
When the sorter having the non-sort bin is connected to the copying machine having the interruption function and the copying operation is performed in the non-sort mode, the copied sheet are sequentially placed in the non-sort bin. If the interruption is applied in the middle of the copying operation, the interrupting sheet is placed in the sort bin. In this case, if a plurality of sheets are copied as the interruption, the sort bins shifts every time each of the copied sheets are discharged.
In the interruption copying operation as described above, when the number of originals is larger than that of sort bins, the copying operation halts at the point of time when all the available sort bins are used up. It is inconvenient especially when the copy number (preset number) of an original is small (such as 1 or 2). To avoid this, a method can be considered where copied sheets as many as possible are placed in a sort bin (that is, to the number of sheets that can be placed in a sort bin) and the sort bin is shifted when it becomes full. However, in the method, the copied sheets of an original may be separated and placed in different sort bins.